Al Mueller is an electric service technician for North Platte Municipal
Light and Power, where he has worked 27 years.
Six
o’clock, time to get up,” Mom’s voice would echo in the
upstairs hallway. I knew that I still had an extra 20 minutes. That wonderful
woman would fold my papers so that I could indulge a few extra moments of
warm covers on a cold winter’s morn.
Eventually the blankets had to come off and the reality of a new day would
hit. Who could ever forget how that linoleum, cooled by a long winter’s
night, felt on toasty warm feet?
What would drive a 12-year-old young man to get up every morning and deliver
the Omaha World Herald on Walnut Street (which ran uphill both directions
and usually had two feet of snow covering it) for two bucks a week? I had
a habit to feed.
Every
Saturday afternoon after collecting from my customers and then paying the
paper bill, two crisp Washington’s were burning a hole in my pocket.
My addiction needed to be satisfied.
I would ride my bike to East Front Street, past the Palms Bar, Haws Billiards
and the original Platte Bar, and park my bike next to the Coney Island lunch
counter. From there I could see the dimly lit lobby of The Palace Hotel
through a large plate glass window. I knew inside I could satisfy my addiction
for the week.
As you walked through the front door of the lobby, your every sense awakened.
The smell of cigars, the creaking floor and dimly lit interior greeted you.
Soon your eyes adjusted and would focus on a short oriental woman whose
head would pop up from behind a glass counter that was stocked with cigars,
cigarettes and candy. She watched your every move. As you made your way
across the lobby, you could feel her eyes pierce your back.
Mom and Dad had warned me about places like this, but I had needs to be
fulfilled. I was a comic book junkie, with Batman the drug of choice. Superman,
The Flash and the Green Lantern were a distant second.
That squeaky, rotating, six-foot-tall, six-sided comic book rack was music
to my ears. The price of a comic book was .12 cents in 1964, so two bucks
went a long way. To the credit of the oriental woman, who watched me like
a hawk, she kept us from looking at the dirty books and saved me untold
penance in the confessional.
The Palace Hotel is gone now. Like the rest of Front Street, it succumbed
to urban renewal in the mid-1970s. I still have all those old comic books
and every once in a while, on a cold winter night, will spend time reading
and reminiscing.
NPTSummer 2005 Issue
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